Thursday, 27 March 2008

"All together now right hand star, Back by the left hand not too far, Face your partner do-si-do,Face your corner do-si-do.Swing your partner round and round Now find another couple and circle up Go find another couple and circle up four,Brand new couple and a brand new four

Circle-to-the-left, around-you-doAll-the-way go two-by-two

Prom-en-ade-her, round-you-goAll-the-way and-don't-be-slow

Circle to the left, go round you doAll the way go two by twoCircle to the left, go round the ring

All the way and hear me sing Promenade, back home you do All the way go two by twoPromenade around you knowTake the lady back, home you go” xxxxxxx

56 comments:

Love the accompanying text too. I see I've missed the transition from winter to Spring in your garden - although snow is expected again tomorrow. I'll have to browse back a few posts to see what you have been up to now :-D

A warm welcome to the Froggie Hoedown at our little corner of paradise.

This Spring for the first time in 17 years, we found twelve dead frogs in the ponds. They were in the shape of large round white opaque balls of firm jelly...not like the transparent frogspawn...with bits of body, head, legs sticking out here and there.

It is a complete mystery to us and after making enquiries to a few frog organisations, we are none the wiser.

The good news is that a great many frogs gathered over the past few days and I managed to make a little video which should be ready very soon.

Welcome back, shirl. Great to have your company again. Glad you like the photos :)

Welcome, Nancy. thank you for introducing yourself. Our ponds are roughly 25x25 square feet...so fairly large. They are solely for wildlife...frogs, toads, newts and pondlife...so we have no fish in them.

We had about 40 frogs today :)

Lovely to see you, Barbara. I thought the Hoedown square-dance epitomised the frenzied activity of the frogs today :)

Superb pictures...I was just wondering ...does this huge population of frogs attract any predatory birds at all? Because here in India, we invariably find a good many hawk-eagles and kingfishers in places where there are good number of frogs and toads.

Great to see your frogs :-) Quite a bit of the spawn in our pond was unfertilised and turned white which is a shame. Also our fish are disappearing, a bit of a disaster on the pond front - not herons, we have found pieces of fish! Great to see yours doing so well :-)

Great to see you back, gt3 films. It is great to watch the frogs when they come together. It is like watching a kind of ballet, in fact :)

Welcome, dear Sandy. Glad you enjoyed the froggie dance :)

Dear Thalia, lovely to have your company again. On two occasions we had a pesky heron (beautiful bird though :) gobbling up our frogs...but, mostly, the frogs come and go without trouble.

It must be quite disheartening, Chris, to see things go wrong in your pond. I have read about a frog disease. Perhaps it has affected some of the frogs in your area. Let's hope for a better outcome next year :)

A warm welcome, dear Cheryl. I think it is worrying when the ponds are empty of the natural wildlife. Too many farmers still use pesticides and chemicals... and the wind carries airborne spores.

When we were children, ponds were overflowing with frogspawn. We must do everything we can to help endangered wildlife, even the humble frog :)

It will go very soon now, smilnsigh, and, after such a long wait, you will appreciate the glory of the Spring even more :)

Really enjoyed the frog dance. Great pics. There are two ponds on our property here on the coast of Northern California. We just moved here last summer so this is the first time we've experienced the frogs at our ponds. Ours became invisible whenever we went near. So it is great to see your pics and know just what ours were up to when we were not looking. :) We were enthralled by their songs, day and nite. Sounded like hundreds of them. Thanks for the pics and the fun song/dance. Geat job.I'm a first time visitor of your blog. Will check back often. Thanks.

That shows; no one absolutely no one can capture nature in this manner than an ardent nature lover like you. This post and the pics are genuinely a collectors' item. I never knew that one could view a spawning activity so romantically!

A warm welcome to you all to our little corner of paradise on this very wet April Fool's Day.

Lovely to meet you, Teresa. thank you for introducing yourself to the garden. It was great fun taking all the photos of the frogs as well as several attempts at filming them, Teresa. unfortunately the video has not successfullt uploaded yet. I'm not sure what's gone wrong this time. i can watch them on the computer...they just won't upload. Sad, because I'd like to share the fun :)

I'm glad you enjoyed the fun, Kathleen. As the frogs danced around the pond the music just came into my head :)

Oh, the frogs disappeared when they saw me coming, Miranda. But I just sat there at the side of the pond, in the rain, and waited...and waited. Very soon they came up for air and began to dance regardless of my presence..so I clicked the camera, and shot a few films ...which I'm still hoping to upload :)

A very warm welcome to you, Colette. Lovely to meet you. You and I have frogs in common now. I hope you can take a few pics and show them on your blog too :)

Hello, dear Libby, and welcome to you too. Yep! They are all-singing, all-dancin' froggies here at Barleycorn :)

Lovely to have your company, Petunia's Garden. We sure had a-lotta fun :)

Making babies is a very romantic activity, dear Green Thumb, and the frogs really did dance as if they were in formation, competing at the Olympics :)

Great pictures and a fun time had by all I bet.Interesting markings on some of your frogs. Mine did their stuff to, so hopefully plenty of frogletts later on, although not as many as yours.I'm glad to hear that you will be giving the habitat tower a go, I'm quite excited to see how it develops and I'm looking forward to seeing how you get on.

I love your blog. And the previous post; beautiful, just beautiful,I am jealous, I have just left my beloved garden to move into a rented house and an eagerly awaiting having my own patch of dirt to play in when we buy our own house later in the year.

I just came over from Kylee's at Our Little Acre. So I glad I did so I could "witness" the froggy hoedown. Our little tiny Pacific tree frogs are too shy to "hoedown" during daylight and when I can take photos. So it's fun to see yours.

Great to have you visiting our garden again, Mark. As you say, the frogs have interesting patterns, each one quite unique.

My hubbie and I will try to make a habitat tower this Spring. We saw them at the Chelsea Flower Show last year, and yours reminded me to remind my hubbie (!) that he would be helping me to make one :)

Thank you for introducing yourself, Linda May, to our garden. You are most welcome. i am glad you have enjoyed the visit and I wish you well with your new patch later in the year :)

Well, dear Kate, I must say that you and I are kindred spirits, as I, too, imagined that scene...and you accompanying them on your fiddle :)

How lovely to meet you, Cindy, from Rosehaven Cottage. Welcome to our little corner of paradise. I'm glad you enjoyed the hoedown. I must pop over to see if there are any tiny Pacific tree frogs in your garden :)

Well, dear Guild-Rez, you might well ask if they were posing for me...it kinda looked that way. After I had sat by the side of the pond for a wee while, so that they would get used to my presence, they got on with the job in hand and ignored me :)

My camera is a Caplio R6, Ki, with a 7.1x optical zoom lens. It is very good for me as it is lightweight and small to transport and has a wide-angle lens and a macro facility too. The lens range is 28-200mm. They like to spawn in the shallows at the margins of the ponds, which means I was able to be close to them :)

Glad you enjoyed the fun, dear Kylee. I enjoy sharing with everyone who visits the garden :)

Hi, Ruth, lovely to have your company once more. Ponds provide interest the whole year round. I sit at the margins of ours, fascinated, and watch as time goes by...just as I did as a child with my brother by my side :)

Your a very creative person like someone else said. I had a good laugh, the froggie hoedown :)

Very cute!

Yeah I know those frogs can really lay eggs. I know in our ponds we have literally thousands upon thousands each year. I have 10 ponds and every spring we see a little Froggie Hoeddown as well :)

Maybe I'll take a few pictures and show you as well this spring and I'll post them on my blog and maybe exchange links to each post. It's quite amazing how many eggs they lay, They literally are all over the pond liners and all the water lilies, crazy. You got to watch where you step after they develop into frogs when walking in the yeard :)

Hi Jamie! Great to see you again in our little corner of paradise. I can well imagine you tip-toeing around the yard when there are a great many tiny frogs hopping about...we are exactly the same here at Barleycorn :)

Thank you for a very fun time!Froggie hoedown had me laughing.Having a large pond near must be a joy.I just poured another cup of coffee, hope you do not mind me staying around for awhile.I have catching up to do...Namaste,Sherry

Thank you for introducing yourself, Surya, to our little corner of paradise. You are most welcome. Come again :)

Hello again, Sherry, from q. Lovely to have your company. The frogs are great fun and keep us and the cats amused :)

You are quite correct, Yolanda Elizabet. One corner of the pond is full of spawn now with a handful of frogs guarding it each day. It is one of the shallow margins where the sun always shines and keeps the spawn warm while the tadpoles are developing. I think we do not have as much spawn in the back pond as the shallowest shelf is deeper and therefore colder for the spawn :)

What a beautiful photo essay. You remind me to include more photos in my posts. Out of curiosity, where do you store all your pix?

Also, I was stunned to realize that I know frogs and toads by sound, not sight. I've taken part in a volunteer frog survey each spring. We go out at night, to assigned sites we monitor each year, and identify species from types and frequencies of calls. Aside from a bull frog and spring peeper, it dawned on me I couldn't ID a frog in the daytime, unless it "spoke"! Must fix that! :)

I've been using an online photo storage system (photobucket.com), but I'm running out of space and I'm too cheap to pay for more storage. Love your idea of an external hard drive--that hadn't even crossed my mind, though it really should have. That would be great for backup, too!

We have pipistrelle bats which either live in our barn or in neighbouring mature deciduous trees...either way, they keep their habitats secret, which keeps them safe from man and his wily ways. In the summer they circle our house and swoop silently down to catch midges and insects which breed in our ponds :)

In our garden we have the so-called Common frog, Rana temporaria, which, sadly, is becoming a bit of a misnomer as they are becoming scarcer every year due to many farmers removing hedges and draining their land, emptying ditches etc.

When we moved here 17 years ago, there was an enormous artesian well in the field behind us, where we often watched the farmer's cows drinking; mute swans swimming and was a breeding ground for all the local frogs, toads and newts.

Over the years the farmer has been the beneficiary of many EEC grants (and the like) to help pay for copius amounts of draining materials. Only, very occasionally do we see any surface-water lying there now.

To counteract this, I like to think I'm doing my bit in my little patch...as if I came here in the nick of time :)

I've only once spotted a frog in one of our ponds up here. They are very shy. I am amazed at your pictures! Do they allow you to come close, or are these all with a zoom lens? I love listening to the frogs and wish we had many more here.

About Me

In 1990, as we were driving through a little village, I noticed a quaint old barn with a corrugated roof, and a newly-built house adjacent to it. They were standing on a large plot of land, full of pernicious weeds - a corner of a farmer's field, in fact. Then we saw the "For Sale" sign. Four months later we moved in and decided to create a garden for wildlife.
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